Beyond Powerpoint
Introduction This page was created out of a discussion on a group in LinkedIn among Toastmasters from arond the world. The idea is to crowd-source and have individual Toastmasters pitch in to create a new Advanced Communication Manual. Disclaimer This is an informal attempt made with good intentions and has no bearing, compulsion, agenda whatsoever regarding the official Toastmasters International Educational Program. We're just fans! If we're successful, we'll submit this as a proposal, but as of 30th Oct 2010, this manual is just a figment of imagination and ''cannot ''be used as an Advanced Communication Manual under TMI. Help First time editing a wiki? No problem! It's designed to be easy to use. Just press the Edit button next to a section, and that portion will now appear like an editable Word document. So just start typing! Once done, provide a summary at the bottom of what you've done. You can choose to see a Preview of your work before saving it. When satisfied, just press the Save Page button, and you'll be brought back to this page, with your work published for the whole world to see! Tip: First join this site (free signup, top right) if you want credit for your edits, as well as to Follow this page and get email alerts whenever it's edited. See this page for a complete guide on wiki editing and creation. Summary A summary of what this manual would cover. Scroll below to read about the sister manual that has been set up, or click here: Communicating Through Technology Naming, order, selection of projects Let's concentrate on creating full-fledged projects - as many as possible, and then when we're done, we can vote the best 5 and the order. Hence I've renamed the projects from numbered to lettered. The Talk page whose link you'll see at the top next to the page's title (in a speech box) is a discussion forum where this sort of collaborative decision-making is possible. But first let's concentrate on putting some content here. --Nikhilsheth 01:44, December 2, 2010 (UTC) Project A : A Picture is worth a Thousand Words In this project your challenge is to string together images that tell your story. Rather than force your audience to read text-heavy slides consider creating a series of visual images and narrate this carousel of images with spoken word. Objectives *Deliver a speech using a presentation where the slides have absolutely no text or any symbols on them *Each slide / view should add to the speech, but the speech need not be a direct description of each slide. Time : 5-7 minutes What it should not be A photo album or a series of slides where the speaker is describing each and every slide. It's ok to have some slides like that, but overall the slide should lend a visual effect enhancing but not necessarily consuming what the speaker is saying. Project B: Pecha Kucha Examples include the use of a technique called "Pecha-Kucha" to create a 20x20 slide presentation. 20 images, each image is displayed for 20 seconds, and no stopping. See: www.pecha-kucha.org/ As noted in Project A, though it could be a series of slides where the speaker is describing each and every slide, a more effective method is allowing the slides to proceed, illustrating the speaker's main points in a timely fashion but not forcing the speaker to wait for the next slide, which can create awkward pauses. Project C 10-20-30 Steve Jobs follows Guy Kawasaki's rule in his presentations called the 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint. Your challenge is create an informative presentation that is 10 slides long, no more than 20 minutes in duration and using 30 point font to deliver your message. Time: 15-20 minutes Evaluation Criteria: Was the speaker's message clear? Were all the slides supportive of the message? Was the reading material easy to grasp? Was the audience focus on the speaker or the presentation? Project D: See / Hear / Read One of the most frequent forms of Powerpoint abuse is a presenter improperly distributing types of content and topic details among visual, spoken, and printed channels. Current learning, cognitive, and communications theories offer useful guidance on what information should be presented visually, what should be delivered by the speaker, and what should be included in a handout for (later) reference. This project builds on the skill of delivering both visual and spoken content that was developed in previous projects. For this project, the speaker should choose a topic that lends itself to being described in many levels of detail. An appropriate topic is one which the presentation stimulates the audience's interest and drives them to learn more -- which is facilitated by a handout repeating the presentation's main points, providing more detail, and listing online and library resources for further research. Project E - The Multimedia Presentation In this project you should use the following 4 elements together - Text Slides, Graphic Slides, Sound Clips and Video Clips The project is to test your understanding and appreciation for the different media one uses in a presentation and blending them to enhance the message and ensure that the audience is not bored, distracted, or irritated by the use of the 4 different media in addition to your spoken words. This is a common format used in Business and Training presentations and if done correctly leads to a WOW experience for all. But it can also go wrong and be a single nightmare for all. Skills tested are the proper/subtle use of animated text, graphics, and transitions, the manual or pre-programmed sequencing of sound and video, appropriately supporting the presentation topic and purpose, that can make multimedia a really good show. Time Allowed - 20 Minutes, give or take 3 to 5 Minutes. Project F The Technical Presentation This Assignment tests the speakers ability to present Technical Information such as Financials, Processes , It Architectures and Project Plans etc in such as way as tio get both the Key Elements of the project across to the audience so that they will react to the Call To Action in the final summation withourt borinfgg the sudience to death with too nmuch techie information The test is to see how one nhandles volumes of detailed information and converts irt to Cha\rtsn Graphs, Flow Diagrams etyc instead of the usual Copy Paste of a Spread sheet or over clomplicated design drawing. The test is toi see how the speaker tr\eats the informartion and Build slides and breaks down oters to illustrate techniogcal poinbts Time - 20 Minutes Give or take 5 Minutes. Sister Manual Since we take two manuals of 5 projects each at a time and there are so many ideas, 2 proposed Advanced Communication Manuals (note: read Disclaimer) have been initiated : #this manual to concentrate on the visual aspect of communicating using modern technology, and #a new manual to concentrate on other aspects as well. Communicating Through Technology Ideas, Doubts and Suggestions Please add here any doubts or suggestions you have regarding anything on this page. Please be accurate in pinpointing the exact section. *Opening Suggestion This is background information 'cherry picked' from the LINKED IN discussion mentioned above Crowd Sourcing Experiment ... Looking for a few good men and women to draft a new advanced manual. by John Lesko ... Concepts for potential projects in the "Beyond Powerpoint" include ... Project #1 ... "A picture is worth a thousand words" ... In this project your challenge is to string together images that tell your story. Rather than force your audience to read text-heavy slides created in slideware applications such as PowerPoint or Keynote, consider creating a series of visual images and narrate this carousel of images with spoke word. Examples include the use of a technique called "Pechu-Kucha" to create a 20x20 slide presentation. 20 images, each image is designed to stay up for 20 seconds. See: www.pecha-kucha.org/ Project #2 ... "Storyboarding or Visual Roadmaps" ... From Hollywood to Bollywood film makers use a creative process called storyboarding. Key scenes are captured in still images and strung together to tell a story line. Comic books are drawn this way. And so are stories told using a visual roadmap techniques and tools such as "PREZI." See www.prezi.com for detail on a FREE web-accessible license and upgrades. Project #3 ... "Podcasting " ... Before television there was radio. And many still call radio the theater of the mind. Today we have what are called podcasts. Tell your story via a podcast. Record your story and combine it with slides or images from earlier projects created in PowerPoint, a Pecha-Kucha presentation, and/or PREZI-roadmap. When you combine tools and techniques, some call this a 'mash-up.' Project #4 ... Produce your own video ... Inexpensive hand-held video cameras and cameras embeeded in cell phones have helped create the "You Tube" phenomena. For this project create your own 'short video' and share it via "You Tube." See www.youtube.com Project #5 ... Facilitating Visual Meetings ... Here you may need to thing about a 'dialog' w/ your audience ... Check out www.grove.com *(From Siobhan James and posted by John Lesko here for comment ...) Five suggestions for an advanced manual would be: 1. Where is my audience? Creating presentations for a mobile world 2. Who is listening? Understanding cultural diversity in visual media 3. How to share information? Taking Tufte (need a more complete citation here re: Tufte) to a club level 4. Why use a particular technology to communicate? Recognizing the differences and capabilities of a variety of visual communication tools 5. What has age got to do with it? Different generations tend to use different visual tools, selecting the best visual technique for your audience. *[[User:Nikhilsheth|Nikhilsheth] 16:20, November 3, 2010 (UTC): I'd like to propose a change: Instead of "Beyond Powerpoint" how about "Communicating through technology" or "The Computer Age Communicator" This would spare us from using a trademarked name and simultaneously free us to explore more than just the visual dimension. Ideas for the 5 projects: 1. Visual roadmap / storyboarding / only pictures 2. Peccha Kuccha (20x20) 3. Special effects (use short audio or video clips during the speech to enhance it) 4. Podcast (audio only, pre-recorded) 5. Webinar - present speech from remote location using audio+video, or slides+audio or combination, incl. live chat *Any questions?... The interactivity of the audience should be enhanced by technology- highlighting a contributors profile and agenda in real time both locally and abroad through the internet to the desired effect would be a great advancement. I would like to see multiple conferences held simultaneously across the globe, all communicating with another in timed sequences allowing input from both audience and spokesperson so as to respect the hierarchy and procedures that have been developed ever since people started having conferences, but with the advantage of real-time digital audio/video sync and highlighting. Proposed Name changes Put in your suggestions for changing the name - of this manual as well as individual projects. We can then take a vote in the Talk section. Please also provide a short justification of why you thnk this name should be adopted. *Manual Title : "The Presentation Expert" . Main motivation for change : Avoid copyright notices and make us independent of any particular brand. *Manual Title : "The Visual Presentation". - to convey that this manual stresses on visual aspect. Also, this title might make room for projects that use a medium other than screens. Links *http://speakingaboutpresenting.com/ *http://www.pecha-kucha.org/ *http://www.prezi.com *Sister Manual : Communicating Through Technology Instructions #Want to get started on Wikia and be recognized as a person instead of an IP address? Hit the Sign Up link on the top right. #You'll know what to do next to sign up.. a username, an email, a password, that captcha thing and you're in! #Come back to this page! #Make sure you're logged in - you should see your profile on the top right now. #Press Edit at any of the headings, or Edit the whole page #Make sure you copy-paste what you're writing to notepad or something of the sort.. to ensure you don't lose it in case of any error. #Put in a summary in the summary text box - of what you did so it's easy to track later. #If you want to see how what you've written would look like, hit the Preview button instead of Save page first. #Now if you're satisfied with your work, hit Save Page. #Caution : Keep text editing and image inserting separate. If you want to put in an image, do it after you've made the rest of the article. #The top left dropdown in the Editing toolbar while you're editing, can help you change a particular line from simple to any heading. The heading then gets listed in the contents box on the top of the page. For instance, right now I'm going to take the cursor to "instructions" on top and change it from "Normal" to "Heading 2" so it becomes an independent section.